Question: Michael is 4 times as old as Ben and is also 24 years older than Ben. How old is Michael?
Explanation: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Michael and Ben. Let Michael's current age be $m$ and Ben's current age be $b$ $m = 4b$ $m = b + 24$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $m$ is to solve the second equation for $b$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $b$ , we get: $b = m - 24$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $m = 4$ $(m - 24)$ which combines the information about $m$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $m = 4m - 96$ Solving for $m$ , we get: $3 m = 96$ $m = 32$.